Rieren’s journey over the next few weeks didn’t reveal much by the way of what was happening in the greater world. A few lonely homesteads dotted the mountainside here and there, but Rieren bypassed them as she wended her way through the various passes between mountains.

The lands would grow more populated when the sheer peaks gave way to mere highlands, but for now, she was starved of any people who could deliver news or provide companionship.

Batcat was once more beneficial here. Apparently, when it did choose to use its wings, it could travel great distances. In fact, when Rieren found her next cultivating location—a nice little fountain that would work great for her next Aspect Pillar—the kitten actually left her for over a day.

When it returned, it had memories.

They couldn’t exactly communicate via speaking, sadly, but Batcat still had curious ways of getting its meaning across in rather human ways. Random biting gestures always indicated that it wanted Rieren to channel Essence through it and observe the memories it had collected.

As such, Rieren accessed the store of recollections it had collected. She was curious what exactly it had gone over to find.

Rieren blinked when she found that they were memories of… home. Perhaps she ought not to call Lionshard Sect her home any longer, now that she had abandoned it, but she couldn’t help it. After all, that was where all those she cared about resided.

It seemed Batcat had collected the recent memories of one such person.

Amalyse had taken a personal hand in the rebuilding of the Sect, which was progressing rather smoothly. With the help of the automatons, all those who resided in the Sect had taken over the central chamber of the dungeon to create residences for themselves there. They were farming monsters in the outer tunnels, that still held Abyss Rents, to get Credits for purchasing materials. Rather smart.

It was intriguing to see how the Sect was constructing actual buildings within the dungeon. Remaking their lives. But what Rieren was mostly curious about were the interpersonal details about Amalyse and all those she interacted with.

The Sect Leader seemed to be in his element in leading the Sect into a new age. He and the Elders had mourned their losses, of course. Losing Elders Olg and Saygren had been difficult, especially after Elder Imilem had died in one of the invasions. Then there were the various disciples and guards their foray into the dungeon had caused the deaths of.

But they had managed to rally all the survivors. That was part of life at the Sect. After a while, danger was ever-present, something none of them could fully excise from the backs of their minds, even if there hadn’t been an ongoing apocalypse.

Kervantes had been incensed to learn how Essalina had used Nerve Rods on his brethren to manipulate the dungeon to open its doors. Thankfully, the leaders of Lionshard Sect had been able to negotiate a fallout between the Ceramic Automatons and the Arteroth clan, despite the latter’s reluctance to even admit they had done anything wrong.

Especially since there had been witnesses who had reported Rieren’s murder of one of the guards.

But Rieren didn’t pay as much attention to all the political ongoings. She was more interested in how Amalyse had to convince Silk not to depart Lionshard Sect. Apparently, that strangely dressed man they had seen with the Arteroth entourage had come to retrieve her.

Silk had eventually been convinced to remain in the Sect, though the man, who had refused to identify himself to anyone except secretly to Silk, had threatened that further complications would force his hand. Rieren didn’t like what that implied.

Despite his haughtiness, Rollo had been depressed ever since he had learned about Folend’s death. In no uncertain words, he had told the Karlosyne contingent to screw off to leave him alone. But that wasn’t his declaration of undying support for Lionshard Sect. Instead, he had begun keeping to himself, roaming around the tunnels of the dungeon like a lonely phantom.

They all dealt with grief in their own ways, it seemed.

Amalyse had also tried to help Serace, who was stuck far back in the dungeon with the Anachron’s corpse. The guards they had left behind had survived and had been keeping Serace company ever since.

Unfortunately, none of them knew how to extricate Serace from his current predicament. Even the Elders, including Elder Gulit whose knowledge about all kinds of Spirit Beasts exceeded anyone else’s, was stumped. Serace had conjoined with the dead Anachron’s Beast Core so integrally, it was nearly impossible to tell where the Anachron ended and he began.

For now, they had resorted to reducing his influence all over the dungeon. It was no easy matter, of course. All the roots and branches that had been spreading out from his body had taken over much of the dungeon. Thankfully, Serace was conscious and could be communicated with using the Nerve Rods, and he was doing his best to cooperate with the Sect.

The meeting that enchanted Rieren most, however, was when Amalyse met up with Atelen.

Rieren’s father hadn’t taken it well when she had announced that she mentioned that she intended to move out of the Sect. It had to be done. Not only was she drawing in a great deal of the Sect’s misfortune, she also had to leave the Sect to truly climb in the ranks of power as fast as she was able to. Especially since the Sect’s store of resources was now gone.

Nevertheless, he wished it hadn’t come to that. She did too. After all, she had hoped that her new life could have been more peaceful. That she might have tried to live a different way this time.

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That instead of being bent on vengeance and power, she could have made something different of herself.

Foolish and naïve. Fate had conspired so that everyone could recall the past, and that meant all of Rieren’s old enemies were bent on ending her before she became a true threat.

She shoved the thoughts aside. Instead, she watched placidly as Atelen talked with Amalyse as though she was his own daughter just as Rieren was. Despite his sadness at Rieren’s departure, he hadn’t gone the route of Rollo. Instead, he had busied himself helping the Sect however he could.

The memories slowly started to fade. As the images started to turn into darkness, she wondered how they were being displayed to her. Chronological order as they had happened? By order of which had the greatest impact on Rieren herself emotionally?

It didn’t really matter. In the end, the point was that Rieren had received a nice little gift from Batcat about the goings-on back in the Sect. The worries she’d harboured about its state could now be laid to rest. Instead, she could turn her attention to actually cultivating.

“Thank you, Batcat,” Rieren said softly.

The winged kitten meowed what she supposed was a welcome, then curled up a few paces away from her. It couldn’t take its customary perch on her head. She was close to the fountain and was thus being sprayed by the water too much.

A sign that she perhaps ought to focus on her cultivation. Which was what Rieren proceeded to do.

The location reminded her of her little cultivating spot with the waterfall on Lionshard mountain, minus all the different Aspects.

But it was fine. What Rieren needed here was a different property of water to fill up another Aspect pillar. A property that this little location provided plentifully.

Her current Aspect pillar was about water’s amorphousness, both in its physical shape and in its very nature. Not only would it become the shape of whatever container that it was placed in, it could also take on very different properties. For instance, water could be both calming rain and rushing rapids. Battering waves and still pond.

Cultivating an Aspect pillar meant comprehending all integral properties of an Aspect, and Rieren’s next step was understanding how everchanging water could be. Adaptability was an excellent ideal one could exercise.

Unfortunately, what Batcat couldn’t do was somehow find more high-Grade Beast Cores for Rieren to sell easily. Her dearth of Credits meant she couldn’t purchase the resources that would have sped up her cultivation, which meant advancing through the ranks was going to take a while.

In the end, Rieren finished constructing the next Aspect pillar about a week and a half later.

Sighing, she stretched as she rose. One pillar down. Two more to go.

And then she would have to worry about finding a heavenly tribulation to actually advance.

Of course, cultivating her spirit wasn’t the only thing Rieren needed to keep up with. Even if she wasn’t in the Sect anymore with physical cultivation instructions a part of her weekly routine, she would still need to advance her physique and ensure her body could handle the advancement she was going through and the power she was channelling.

Thankfully, the true next step in reinforcing her body would come later. At that point, Rieren was hoping she would be in a better position to acquire the Credits she thought necessary.

Nevertheless, for now, she still had to exercise daily and maintain her physical condition. Constant journeying did the trick well enough, but Rieren ensured that she performed select exercises at specific hours of the day too. Contortions kept her flexible. Timed runs over the mountainside made sure her stamina was in perfect shape. Practicing martial techniques, regular breathing exercises, and even simple jumps all helped.

All of that was aided by her spiritual cultivation. Her entire body had already been suffused with Essence, which provided various benefits. For instance, with her stomach infused with Essence, she could now burn Essence directly for her physiological energy demands with a small supplement of food. Less sleep needed meant Rieren could be productive longer per day.

Still, Rieren knew she needed to open more meridians. Channelling more Essence at the same time would allow her to reach even greater heights, so she would have to turn her focus in that direction for a while.

All these different facets of her growth kept her from becoming too bored. Despite the gains she was attaining over the weeks, Rieren had to admit her life would have become far too monotonous if cultivating was all there would have been to it. After all, she had done this once before. Her previous life had been all about this growth.

But besides the presence of her little feline friend, there was one key difference to it all. She would have to redo it all, but much faster than before, if she was to get the better of the gods before they ended her.

“Focus,” Rieren told herself as she was sitting beside the next gurgling stream she had come across on her travels.

Batcat corroborated with a lazy meow.

“Easy for you to say, cat. You can laze about all day since I am the one who has to gather strength for the both of us.”

Another lazy meow. Apparently, Batcat couldn’t find it in it to argue the point.

Not that Rieren could be easily argued against. After all, Batcat’s path to power lay in the consumption of appropriate Beast Cores. Since it couldn’t secure any cores by itself, it fell to Rieren to hunt them down, thereby doing the lion’s share of the work.

She sighed. “At least it will benefit me as much as it will you.”

Batcat purred at her to get on with her meridian-opening.

Huffing a little to herself, Rieren focused on the pathways Essence took within her. She had opened the main meridians in each of the organs in her body a long while back. However, that wasn’t the only ones she could open. By tempering her control to a miniscule degree, she could force her Essence to open new pathways and nodes throughout her body.

Rieren quickly swallowed down a thimble full of Incision Fluid, then clogged one nostril with a petal of a Flotilla Flower. Over the last week’s journey, she had managed to acquire enough Credits to buy a tiny bit of the ginseng and had found a gaggle of the Flotilla Flowers in a secluded grove.

“Focus,” she murmured to herself again.

Meridians were the vessels one’s body used to channel Essence. In classical terminology, according to what Elder Olg had taught Rieren, they were likened to blood vessels. However, later discoveries by famed natural philosopher Patagoril had revealed that meridians also possessed nodes.

Essentially these nodes served as guiding points for the Essence to follow within a cultivator’s body, especially when the meridian was first being hollowed out.

The sensation of the way the Essence flow changed within Rieren was rather uncomfortable. It was like having the smallest of parasites cutting a slow channel through her body. But once the burrowing lines of Essence hit a proper node, she felt a minute burst of euphoria that made the previous discomfort disappear as though it had never been.

Of course, had it been up to Rieren, she would have shuttered both feelings. But this was a mere part and parcel of being a cultivator, so she bore the sensation as best as she could.

The careful application of Essence that this necessitated meant that Rieren had to go slow. Night had come well on by the time she had made some decent progress. Having just started in late morning, Rieren considered opening about a fifth of the new meridians she had targeted was a good outcome for one day.

Next up, Rieren was going to have to find a Beast Core for Batcat. And that meant finding an Anachron.